Considerably Rumpled in Spirit
by Nerdywithoutacause
Summary: Anne falls out of an apple tree and hits her head, causing her to have amnesia. (Takes place between Anne of the island and Anne of Windy Poplars—or after the end of Anne of Green Gables the Sequel for the TV series.)


**UPDATE** I think I fixed the formatting issue, but if you notice any other glaring mistakes please feel free to let me know. I'm posting this from my phone so it gets a little wonky sometimes. Thanks a bunch!

He doesn't take the time to secure his horse before bounding inside the house, through the main room, and clear up the stairs where he knows he'll find them all gathered around Anne's bed. Marilla is waiting for him, though, propped against Anne's closed door. She meets his eyes immediately, but he can't place her expression, sad and tired but something else too.

"How is she?" Gilbert's breath comes in gasps, his words slurring together with the speed of them. He's already reaching for the doorknob when Marilla's hand on his arm stills him.

"She's awake, but there's something we should discuss first," she says. His eyes dart between her and the door. "Come now." She pulls him a few feet from the door, steading him when his feet catch on nothing. Stronger than she looks, he thinks numbly. "Anne took a nasty fall, but she will heal. Her arm is broken and he says she has a concussion, but the doctor is optimistic that she won't suffer any lasting effects." Gilbert lets out the breath he has been holding since Minnie May had told him the news and sinks against the wall, scrubbing a hand over his face and up into his hair.

"Providence," he murmurs, then, "Can I see her?'"

She hesitates a moment. Unlike her, Gilbert thinks, and the dread that had leached from his body at the good news once again find purchase in his gut. "Anne is not herself. The doctor doesn't think it will last, but the brain is a funny thing." Before he can beg for clarification, an answer to all these riddles, Marilla looks him straight on, dead in the eyes. "She has lost some of her memories, Gilbert."

His breath leaves him in a rush, making him dizzy. "How much time has she lost?" he demands, more forceful than he means to be.

Marilla shakes her head, slowly, deliberately. "We have been trying to narrow down where she is now, but a few minutes ago she began to ask for Matthew. I have been trying to gather the courage to take him from her again."

Gilbert's knees refuse to support his weight any longer—his body is too heavy now with this new revelation. He meets the floor with a muted thud, but doesn't feel the impact. She hadn't needed quite so much courage to rip Anne from him, he supposes. "But Matthew, it's been—"

"Years," Marilla nods. A thousand glares flitters through his memory—a hundred harsh words, countless cold silences, endless brushoffs, and days and days apart. How can he go back to that when he's known the warmth of her smiles, the softness of her lips, the love in her embrace? When he looks at her now, he knows he won't see any of his devotion reflected back him. Just like before. He'll return to being absolutely nothing. He thinks that the weight of his despair could send him crashing straight through the floor. It sounds so much like something Anne would say, that it forces a huff of a laugh out of him.

In the midst of his panic a shred of reason nudges its way into the center of the chaos to whisper of hope. It wouldn't be like before, it says, because he knows how this story plays out. He does not know if that is true, if somehow this won't change everything, but he does know that Anne is alive—alive and mostly well—and whether she recovers her memories or not he can only ever be where she is. "I want to see her."

On any other occasion it would be comical, the speed with which her expression morphs from eager to mortified. She had been expecting Mr. Cuthbert, Gilbert muses or perhaps Diana, someone other than him. "Marilla! How could you bring that person in here at a time like this?" Anne shrieks. She pulls the blanket up over head with her good arm—the doctor, busy wrapping the other, is not unaffected by the display judging by the grin playing across his lips.

"Anne Shirley, you come out from under there and stop acting like a child. You have a visitor," Marilla reproaches.

"I won't!" He had prepared himself for this, of course. Anne Shirley of his youth never would have welcomed his presence in her moments of weakness. Gilbert steps out from behind Marilla, inching his way closer to Anne's bed.

"Come now, Anne. You promised we would be friends, remember?" he asks, hopeful. An inch of unruly red hair appears above the edge of her blanket, followed closely by a smooth freckled forehead, then a pair of clear green-gray eyes which squint at him beneath furrowed brows. "I will not let you go back on your word, else you'll just hold that against me too." He can't see the rest of her face, but he knows that her mouth is undoubtedly twisted into a grimace as she tries to think her way out of his challenge. Never one to run from a dare, his Anne Shirley.

The blanket falls away all at once. "An incredible lapse of judgment on my part, obviously," she snaps, nose pointed resolutely up at the ceiling. "Seeing as how you use it against me so frequently."

"Why shouldn't I?" he teases, seating himself next to her, "Seeing as how it works for me so frequently." She glares at him but he only feels giddy that she remembers this much. It occurs to him that she shouldn't—Marilla had said that she'd been asking for Matthew. He doesn't know what it means just yet, but he leaves well enough alone for now. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I fell out of an apple tree and broke my arm, Mr. Blythe. How do you think?"

"Come off your high horse, Ms. Shirley, I'm only asking as a concerned friend." She huffs, still staring up at the ceiling instead of at him. "What in the heck were you doing up so high in that tree anyway?"

"Well, I—" she hesitates then, her gaze flickers over to him briefly, "don't remember exactly but—" She stops talking altogether, staring at him long and hard now, eyebrows crinkling over the bridge of her nose. It's a rather nice nose, Gilbert has always thought. Her hand moves as if by its own accord, hanging in the air by his face when she catches herself. "You look. . . different." The doctor, Gilbert has not caught his name, clears his throat. He rambles off a list of instructions for Anne and Marilla—nothing too strenuous, let him know if there is any change, etc., nothing Gilbert couldn't have told them himself— and excuses himself from the room, Marilla following him with 'I will walk you out.'

Anne watches him through all of it, eyes transfixed on his face, his hair. Gilbert tries not to preen under the attention because he knows that this is just Anne's confusion but he can't quite help it. He never really could when it came to Anne's attention, always too eager for it, to his own detriment ordinarily. He wonders what she thinks of his looks now—looking on him like this anew, as if for the first time—if she likes the way his jaw has widened and his shoulders broadened, if she notices the strength in his arms or how his face has lost some of its boyish roundness and approves. His breath catches as her fingers graze his cheek—sharper than she must remember, he has yet to gain back all the weight he lost from the fever—tracing the stubble he had not had time to rid himself of before racing to Green Gables. Traitorous fingers, her expression says, but she doesn't pull away, looking more and more frustrated as the seconds tick by.

"I don't understand," she murmurs. Her fingers catch in the short hair at his temple—no longer the free curls of his school days. "You look different but just as I remember all at once. Isn't that so peculiar?" Her face twists up. "And I had the strangest notion when I woke up with the doctor and Marilla standing around my bed. Why, until the very moment you spoke to me I had all but forgotten about my dear Matthew's passing, I had even asked for him. How could I do such a thing?" She's mostly talking to herself now, fingers still buried in Gilbert's hair as if she's forgotten about them completely. He doesn't mind, quite the contrary, but it feels wrong to get any pleasure from her current state. Slowly, as not to spook her, Gilbert fits his hand over her much smaller one and pulls it down to rest beneath his on the bed.

She allows it for only a moment before she jerks away, looking all the more anxious as she takes to plucking at a loose string on her blanket. He has spooked her. "Has anyone contacted Diana?" she blurts. False cheeriness makes her voice the slightest bit shrill. "I should love to see her."

"She's . . .away right now, Anne," Gilbert says gently. This Anne is familiar to him as his own right hand, cautious Anne—Anne who knows something is amiss, but maybe not exactly what that may be—the Anne that invited Priscilla or Jane or Diana along on all of their outings so they would not be left alone together. With this Anne he must tread very carefully.

"Away, where?" she demands, "The Barry's haven't mentioned any vacations."

"I think we had better wait until Marilla returns."

"Something's happened, hasn't it? Oh dearest Diana, what has become of you?" she moans, hysterical.

Gilbert tries to soothe her with a hand on her shoulder but she rips herself away as if his touch burns her. "It isn't like that at all," he says, hurt coloring his tone, "Please, calm down, Anne."

"Calm down? How can I when I know something is wrong, deep down in my bones I know it, but you aren't telling me what?"

"Anne—"

"And that look! I never knew Gilbert Blythe to have such an expression, but you've been wearing it from the moment you walked in." Marilla walks through the door not a moment too soon.

"I apologize for keeping you, Rachel was here checking in. I asked her to come by a little later once you've had time to catch your bearings." Marilla looks at him meaningfully, she means to do this now. After all, he hadn't given it a thought before, but Rachel and the twins would have to return sometime wouldn't they?

"My bearings? Why, it's only a broken arm and a bump on the head, Marilla," Anne says, puzzled, "Not typhoid." Gilbert winces but she doesn't notice. "I'm fine to see Rachel."

Marilla sits on the edge of Anne's bed, looking as though she'd rather be spreading manure than having this conversation. Gilbert can't fault her. "I'll just come right out and say it because this isn't the kind of news that can be broken gently," she begins, "That 'bump on the head' as you say, was a nasty one, Anne. Dr. Peters will be around every few days to monitor your headaches and fatigue and the like, but more than that he will be keeping track of the progression of your memories."

"My. . .memories?" Anne shoots baffled looks at the both of them. "Why on earth would he be doing a thing like that?"

"He couldn't say why, but something about how you hit your head has caused you to lose some of them." Anne watches Marilla's face for a long moment like she is waiting for a smile to break across it, something to uncover the joke in all this.

"Anne," Gilbert calls, "how old are you?"

She huffs, temper flaring, that short fuse she's so known for having already been put to the test today. "You know very well how old I am."

"You're right," he assures her, not rising to the challenge, "I do. But I'd like to hear you say it. Please." He's sure to be exceedingly pathetic, his eyes downcast until the 'please' when he looks up at her through his eyelashes—shyly, meekly. Not so much the case, in truth. Anne mentioned to him once a few weeks ago that she couldn't resist a thing he asked of her when he looked at her that way, and Gilbert admits he's been using it against her ever since.

"Sixteen and half," she says, resigned. "Does that please you?" It really, really doesn't. So much has happened between the time they had begun teaching and now-—good and bad. He doesn't know where to even start with trying to reclaim those memories, especially with such a time restraint. He will stay as long as it takes, of course, but he's expected to leave for medical school soon and Anne for Summerside. It's all so overwhelming now, looking at it straight on. In a brief flight of fancy he thinks he'd rather have been in that tree too, that they'd both fallen and forgotten themselves. Maybe it would be a less daunting task were they trying to find themselves together.

Marilla reaches out and squeezes Anne's hand. "You are every bit of twenty-two," she says. "Dr. Peters is optimistic you'll get all the years back in time, but the first step in that is for you to know the truth."

"Twenty-two? I don't know what's going on but if this is an elaborate joke to punish me for my clumsiness, it's a cruel one."

"Look at me, Anne." Gilbert pleads. "Do I look nineteen anymore? You know it's the truth." She does, he can see it so clearly on her face, the way she wears all of her emotions.

"I don't know what to say," she says, "I don't have words for what I'm feeling. How could six years be stolen from me, just like that?" Stolen from us, Gilbert wants to say. Nearly their entire friendship. It had taken six years for Anne Shirley to fall in love with him. How could he get her to remember that in a matter of months?

"God has his reasons," Marilla says, "It is not our place to question them." Gilbert doesn't find that particularly comforting. "You should get some rest, Anne. The twins are distraught, you'll need your strength to deal with them."

"Twins?" she shrieks, the very picture of indignation. "I haven't—I mean, they aren't—?"

Marilla pinches in a smile. "No, blessed girl, they are not yours."

Anne sighs, relieved, and laughs to herself. "Thank goodness. I felt as though a soft breeze could have blown me over. To think I had a husband and children I didn't remember— Well, it's just as I've always said, I shall likely die an old maid."

Marilla shoots Gilbert a look. "Anne, there's something else. You and Gilbert—"

"Are great old chums now," Gilbert interjects, "We studied our courses together, went to Redmond together—along with Charlie Sloan—I'm really the best candidate to help get your memories back, so I'm going to be around very often." Marilla watches him disapproving, never one to encourage a lie but Gilbert knows from experience that when it comes to his feelings for Anne, revealing too much too soon does more harm than good.

"Oh,"Anne breathes, "I'm a BA? How positively wonderful." For a moment Gilbert thinks she might actually be glowing in a literal sense, she's so happy. "But won't your—I mean, you must have other obligations than wasting your time on me."

Gilbert grins and shakes his head. "You could have just asked as much, but the answer is no, Anne Shirley. I haven't married. Perhaps I shall die an old batchelor."

"But—"

"Get some rest, Anne," he says, standing. "I'll be back bright and early tomorrow and we'll start at this fresh." She looks reluctant but he doesn't give her much room to argue, already moving towards the door. "Goodbye, Anne, Marilla."

Anne still looks like she wants to say something, but fatigue must win out because she only says, "Goodbye, Gil."

As Gilbert saddles his horse a few minutes later, his thoughts are racing. He has heard of cases of amnesia before, most of them only brief boughts, but he has heard of those that never fully recovered their memories. He only hopes that if Anne's is one such case he's strong enough to bear it.


End file.
